Ethics in Government

Elon Musk isn’t the only billionaire puppetting the federal government. Sam Altman also has staff in his pocket. All it cost was $100,000

RDP Founder and Executive Director Jeff Hauser joined The Lever to discuss the conflicts of interest plaguing President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks.

DOGE is a new weapon in Trump’s ongoing war against the administrative state. But it’s important to remain clear-eyed about the value federal civil servants provide. These individuals help ensure the safety of our food, medicine, transportation, air, and water. They are also the backbone of our education, health care, and financial regulatory systems. There is no doubt that many Americans feel burned by their recent interactions with these systems, but federal employees are the wrong targets of their ire.

The initial series served as a reminder of the first Trump administration’s utter indifference to the public interest. This time around, the Revolving Door Project will be on hand to provide real time, clear-eyed analyses of the President-elect’s approach towards governance, staffing, ethics and critically, the material impact of his pro-corporate attitudes. 

Today, the Revolving Door Project published a new white paper, “Rebuilding Public Trust: Six Principles to Guide Reform,” which provides a blueprint for strengthening the federal government’s ethics programs across the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

We cannot forget the fundamental wrongheadedness of the Court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore, which was possible only with the votes of at least two justices whose conflicts of interest merited recusal, one of whom reportedly “provided the early framework” for the decision before oral arguments were even presented to the Court.

In a new memo from the Court Accountability, Revolving Door Project, Take Back the Court, & True North Research, we ask whether the Supreme Court is avoiding putting politically sensitive cases on its docket before the November election.

The justices hand-pick their docket, and if history has taught us anything, we can expect the faction dominating the Court to once again select cases that offer them opportunities to push an extreme right-wing agenda.